Angels and Insects
by Hazgarn
Summary: Three years is a long time, but it would mean nothing if Wikus couldn't first survive his first weeks in District 9. Wikus/Tania. M for violence and disturbing imagery.
1. Chapter 1

_Most people have a hard time understanding the things I've done. _

_I think it was what any average man might do, given my same circumstances. Not a good man. If I'd been a good man I would never have been where I was, doing what I was doing. I know that now. And a smart man would not have made my mistakes. An average man…ignorant, reckless, petty, selfish, frightened. Human. A man who was having his life robbed from him, a man being hunted. And on top of all that, a man whose humanity was slipping swiftly through his fingers. Desperate, I latched on to the only hope available to me. _

_That hope was Christopher Johnson. _

_He's coming back. He promised. That probably has every human on the planet a little nervous. It's filled nearly every Prawn in these slums with a sort of hope. I share that hope, for my own reasons. I can only pray that what he said was true, that I can be saved from what is happening to me. That, after he returns, I can somehow get my life back. That I will see Tania again. _

_Three years, though. That's an awful long time…_

_

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_

Wikus's mind swirled slowly back into consciousness, his entire body feverish and aching. He was disoriented. As his last memories drifted back to him, he found himself wishing they hadn't. Though he would certainly lose little time mourning Kobus, the messiness of the mercenary's death was one of the last things that Wikus would have chosen to relive at that—or any other—moment. It was difficult to guess how much time had passed since then; hours or days might have gone by for all he knew. Though, the state of his body hinted that it probably had not been long…

It took several agonizing moments of fumbling before he could muster the energy to raise his head, but when he did he could see that his right arm and hand—upon which he gratefully cradled his head as stars of pain blossomed behind his eyes—were still mostly human.

For a while longer he lay face down in the dust. It tickled unpleasantly in his lungs, threatening to turn each breath into a fit of coughing. He could feel the dry, gritty soil clinging to the perspiration on his cheek, caked with blood and other grime into his moustache, around his mouth. His breathing tense, he lay still and silent, waiting for the pain to subside.

It didn't.

He managed with great difficulty to roll onto his shoulder. Every muscle screamed at him from one trauma or another, whether the cause was bruises or hated alien chemistry. A biting pain had taken up residence behind his left eye. It felt hideously swollen in its socket, crushed by an uncomfortable, squirming pressure, as though a snake had coiled up inside. Struggling against throbbing in his head and nausea in his belly, he was able to keep his eyes open long enough to see that he lay on the dirt floor of what he was sure was one of District 9's many shanties. A thin, filmy light had fought its way in through sections of plastic bag and grimy tarp taped over the shack's windows. There was an uneven quality to it, seeming dim and grainy, and at the same time desaturated and over-bright…in either case, an incoherent blur.

His brief, delirious glance had only managed to assure him that he was quite alone.

He tried with little success to stir from his prone condition, his limbs weak and heavy-feeling. His best efforts were barely able to raise him to his knees before he was brought down by his own weight and a crushing weariness that left him shaking. Panting hoarse, strangled half-sobs, he was forced to rest. Exhausted, resigned, he waited in aching helplessness.

The air held an oppressive, stifling heat. It pressed in heavily, chafing his throat and coaxing his skin to break out in a thick, oily sweat. But while he could definitely _feel_ the alien limb as a part of himself, a Prawn's exoskeleton was not sensitive to temperature in the way of human skin. The strange half-numbness suggested by the loss of that information was playing tricks with his heat-addled mind. It was easy, for instance, to imagine that the chitinous appendage _wasn't_ his—not truly a part of him, but of some thing growing inside of him, replacing his flesh with its own. That when the transformation was over, Wikus himself would just be gone.

The thought made him clench his left hand. Hot white pain lanced through what remained of his severed thumb-claw. He squeezed harder, until the joints creaked, his teeth grinding together at the pain that erupted in the pincer-like digits. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, wrung from his bleeding gums. Yes, it was all him. And it would still be him, even after everything that had made him human was gone. He wondered, dizzily, which was worse.

Hours later, as he drifted back into unconsciousness, he still hadn't made up his mind.

The next time he awoke, it was to the prodding of a spiny Prawn claw.

Wikus recoiled from the contact instinctively, though in truth it was barely a flinch for all the energy in the motion. His vision still blurry from sickness, he could not see the creature in front of him. He could smell it, though… There wasn't anything on Earth that smelled quite like they did. It was something he had come to be familiar with in all his dealings with the aliens for MNU—a strong musk he'd once described to Tania as being a cross between vinegar and burnt hair. A smell, the ghost of which had not left his nostrils since he's come to hide in District 9.

A smell he'd begun to notice clinging to his own flesh like an unwelcome guest.

Then a bowl was shoved in front of his face, and he smelled something else as well. The scent of raw meat, metallic and strong in the heat, caused him to gag. He was unable to see the meat clearly through his fevered fog—he could hear flies. All the same, the smell called attention to the grinding hunger that had been churning within his gut ever since this nightmarish ordeal began. Almost without thinking, he found his fingers closing around the rim of the bowl.

"_Eat_." The inflection which colored the words escaped him, though some form of impatience or irritation seemed most likely. The guttural Prawn speech sounded right next to his ear. The alien's breath was hot on his skin. It carried with it the smell of carrion and tire rubber, which didn't make the task it commanded any easier.

He hesitated, fighting a mental fog desperately for some adequate protest. Though, he was unsure who he would be arguing with, the alien or himself. Whatever unimaginable process was operating inside him needed fuel with which to effect the change. He could not remember a moment of the past four days in which he hadn't felt he was starving to death—being devoured from the inside. He could not remember a moment in the past two in which he had not been too busy running desperately for his life to address it.

A painful, if pathetically short interval passed before he finally gave in.

Dragging the bowl underneath his nose was an effort in more ways than one. There was click, a scuffling, the creak of a metal door as the creature, seeming satisfied, left him alone once more in the empty hovel. Tears of self-pity stinging his eyes, Wikus was glad for the privacy. With an effort born of desperate hunger and a dwindling amount of concern for his own well-being, he choked down the offered food as best as he could. Against the tips of his fingers the meat was roughly the same warm temperature as the room, clotted and gummy. He fought with the dryness in his throat, taking thick, hurried swallows to avoid keeping it in his mouth for long. His stomach threatened to empty itself more than once as he struggled, the blood clinging in his throat. The feeling he was left with at the end of the battle tasted bitterly like defeat.

Drifting off once more, he wept that his fastidiousness was the least of what Wikus would be forced to abandon if he was to survive the coming years in the alien slums.


	2. Chapter 2

The room was dark. The sun had set hours ago, but she hadn't been able to muster the energy to turn on any of the lights. And if perhaps it was a little lonely and cold, there, in the dark, she figured the alternative was worse. The lights would only reveal the stripped and empty ruin of what had once been a happy home. Still, there was no hiding from it completely. After all, nothing could stop the cars which passed on the street outside. The light curtains could not shut out the headlights which would spill through the windows painting black walls white, throwing their insensitive, bland illumination over the emptied bedroom.

Tania sat curled up at the head of their bed. Her back ached, having sat there in that position through those same hours of darkness since the sun had gone down. She couldn't bear to move, though. She was curled up under a comforter, one which still smelled of _him_. When MNU agents had invaded their home, seizing things, there hadn't been much she could save. What significance many of the items might have had to their investigation she could not fathom. With her father directing their removal, however, she had come to suspect some of them had been taken out of spite. Once they'd gone, she'd spent hours sifting through what remained, searching desperately for whatever traces of her husband they might have left.

One of those very few, precious things she had found now rested lightly in her hands.

It was a small ring. It had been made from the handle of an old silver spoon, with a very small seashell stuck in place on top like a gem. It had seemed a silly little thing that first day she'd seen it, just another cute little gesture of the sort he was fond. He'd told her the shell had come from that beach where they'd first— Back then she had been forced to blush. Now her throat only tightened as she realized she couldn't remember the name of that beach. Wikus would remember, but he wasn't there to ask.

It hadn't seemed so silly once it dawned on her what the ring was _for_.

He had bought her a proper engagement ring later, of course. Once her father had given him his first position at MNU, he could afford one. The trinket had been stuffed into one of her jewelry boxes—with care for its fragility, though with little other thought. Forgotten. When she'd found it, after their search, after hers, she felt almost as though it had been waiting there for her. As though it's true purpose had always been to remain with her, years later, a small piece of her husband that they couldn't take away.

The enshrouding, sepulchral quiet of her home was breached for the first time in hours by a knock at her door.

Her fingers curled reflexively in her lap where her hands lay, nearly forming into a fist around her treasure. Bitter frustration finally pulled from her eyes the tears she'd so carefully managed to stall. As empty as it was, the solitude she'd dubiously allowed herself to enjoy was the closest thing she'd felt to peace in days. Clear evidence of life's needless cruelty, not satisfied to have robbed her of her husband, in the wake of this tragedy it seemed she had lost any claim to privacy for her grief. It had been hard won, this still core of silence. She'd unplugged her phone, shutting out the reporters. It had shut out the well-wishers too, a fact she could not bring herself to regret. Out of any who might attempt to offer their sympathies only her husband's family would understand what she was going through. Though, even if the van der Merwes had managed to contact her, it was beyond her what she could possibly say to them.

The knock sounded at the door again. For a long moment, she tried to convince herself to ignore it.

The harassing attention of the media had reached its crescendo just yesterday as the conflict in District 9 had come to a close. She'd watched from home in horror as the whole thing was captured from above, the disconnected feeling that had carried her through the past few days leaving her with the feeling she actually flew above the distant scene. The violence had been unbelievable, dozens of MNU agents, dead, along with an unknown number of the aliens living there. Bloodshed and the departure of the ship had stirred the residents from their hovels in aimless multitude. From the helicopter's high vantage, it had looked like nothing so much as an upset ant hill. It had all been so surreal that she could only sit there, paralyzed as she watched the marauding alien machine. She could only sit, motionless, as it faltered and spat out her husband. She could only sit, helpless, breathless as the dust had settled and the gun was leveled on him.

She could only sit in pale, quaking, bewildered shock as that man, about to murder her husband, was torn to pieces.

For long hours after she could not have found words if she had wanted to. Yet everyone had wanted to know what she had to say about it, all the same. God help her, she'd been forced to feel a disgusted sort of gratitude for the precious resources her father had diverted just to keep them all away. On the dying footfalls of that thought, she realized who was knocking. Only one person would have gotten past the line of surly mercenaries placed to safeguard whatever brutalized shreds of her sanity remained—the one person from whom she could not hide, for he would be certain for that exact reason that she was still home.

Tania shut her eyes tightly, pulling in a deep breath. A final few tears shivered down her cheeks. Before she even stood, she slipped the ring onto her hand. Her fingers were not quite as slender as they once had been, and it went on tightly, but she refused stubbornly to move until it was on. She stood before the door, looking out through the sight and saw her father there, waiting. Scrubbing the salt tears from her face with the back of her hand she felt somewhat childish, as though in some back corner of her mind, a five year old girl wanted to cry into her father's chest the unfairness of the world and trust that he could make it all better.

The thought almost sent her back to bed.

Piet Smit's face was solemn when his daughter opened the door, possessed of disarming neutrality. Whatever grief he might have for the loss she felt, she was sure none was spared for Wikus himself. Tania did not greet her father. Her face betrayed almost less than his, evidencing only wretched, washed out exhaustion. His eyes searched her face and posture carefully. He seemed to measure the weight of what he had to say, gauging whether or not it would break her.

From his pocket, he pulled a small, sealed plastic bag. An opaque logo obscured the contents, proclaiming them property of MNU. He handed the bag over to her slowly. Turning it over in her hands Tania felt a small round shape under the thin plastic. She realized, a painful surge stabbing her chest, that among other items, it held Wikus's wedding ring.

Some of her strength left her momentarily as she clutched the bag to her chest, breath fighting her in her throat. Piet took the opportunity, with a hand on her shoulder, to draw her into the house, shutting the door behind them. His hand lingered there, heavy and cold-feeling from his time on the front step. His arm wrapped her shoulders gently and he held her, cloaking her in the chill of the outside air. In spite of herself, she leaned against him, sickened slightly by her own comfort at something so solid.

"Hush, Tania," he said quietly, low, his voice seeming to vibrate through her bones in the still dark, "everything will be okay."

His words were the same that he'd spoken before—_just_ before her life had turned from a simple tragedy into a circus. Remembering, it only made their use here sound hollow.

She placed a hand against his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt before finally pushing him away from her with a shaking breath. It wasn't until she'd won space between them that she dared look up into his face. The depth of pity she saw there was terrible.

"It breaks my heart, seeing you like this." He said, slowly lifting his hand over hers where it still rested against his chest. His rough thumb stroked the backs of her fingers as he'd done when she was a child and couldn't sleep, though it was far beyond the power of his touch to banish her nightmares now. His eyes fell down to the hand held in his grasp, and she saw as he noticed the small shell ring the distaste that flicked visibly over his face. Tania had always been vaguely aware of the disappointment her father had felt at her choices. She was only now beginning to suspect how deeply his dislike of Wikus had gone.

He breathed a sigh, the sound carrying a weariness of its own.

"I can't understand why you don't let him go." He said sorrowfully. "After the way he's betrayed you—betrayed all of us. It can all be over if you let it."

Gently, he reached toward her face, drawing a lock of hair out of her eyes. The movement and contact forced her to meet his gaze. The grief lining his expression was the most sincere she thought she'd seen from him in years.

"Please, Tania. Don't let that man's sins ruin your life."

She didn't have a response for him. She drew her arms in, curling them tightly around the bag he'd given her. The sound of crinkling plastic served to remind her of why he'd come. Of the man her father was so energetically trying to erase from her life.

"Tell me what you've done with him, Dad." Her voice was so raw and strange sounding. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard herself speak. Over the past few days, her greatest fear had involved being required to speak to anybody. "Tell me the truth."

"First you said it was his arm, and then—" She broke off, trying to control the ragged breathing which threatened at any moment to transform into a cascade of uncontrolled sobs. But the outrage inspired by MNU's claims roused frustration and anger she could hardly articulate. Its release bubbled to the surface with explosive force, leaving her distantly shocked as her fist slammed against his chest.

"Did you think I wasn't watching? I saw—" Rage was so thick in her voice she nearly choked on it. "I _saw_ what he did. You want me to believe that's from a fokken _STD_?! I'm not _stupid_, Dad!"

She hammered his sternum again in emphasis as her voice rose, broken and angry. Taking in his stunned look, her jaw and eyes both clenched shut painfully, shutting out all but his soft utterance of her name. She stood silently, still shaking with anger. She imagined him trying to deny his lies to her.

"Please, just tell me the truth for _once_." She pleaded finally, her voice half-strangled. She took another moment to compose herself, trying for calm in her next words, but they emerged thick, laden with hurt and the full weariness of the past days. Her eyes dropped tears as she opened them. "The _truth_. Or we're never talking again."

And despite all he was responsible for, her own words cut her heart. Harshly. Despite all he was responsible for, he was still her father, after all. She saw him frown, his eyebrows drawing together, and saw the dozen imagined platitudes and arguments that had been running through his mind snuff out as though by a cold wind. He gripped the aching hand that still rested against his breastbone. But, as the silence stretched between them, long and taught like a spring, she came to know with a bitter certainty that silence would be the only forthcoming answer.

And when, short minutes later, the door closed with him on the other side of it the sound rang with the painful finality of a gunshot.

**

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**Author's Note:** I'd originally meant this fic to focus solely on Wikus's transformation. The title only suggested itself, from the title of a movie I saw once, while I was uploading the story. Thinking about that, and about Wikus's last words in the film, I couldn't help but think the story was trying to tell me that Tania needed to play a bigger part in it. From the size of this chapter, it seems she has a _lot_ to say.


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